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The
Problem of Human [Dis]obedience,
the Providence of a
Supernatural God
by Cadet Erin Wikle
In
the Beginning
To say, it began in the beginning, may seem
to some all too simple. Disobedience began in the garden. And
within the well-known story within The Story is a
well-crafted, intentioned tale of God’s design gone awry when
His created, His beloved, His Ish and Ishah, His male and
female, fell prey to a crafty serpent lingering about, waiting
to whisper lies to the listening ears of His beloved. And so
it began. In the beginning.
Chronicling the creation story, Genesis 1-3
details God’s sequential plan in creatively calling into
existence the heavens and earth: light out from darkness, the
sky and its expanse, the watery deep, and land which would
yield abundant life – and He calls each touch and flourish of
His creative process good. And then, He arrives to “the crown
of creation” and breathes life into ha-adam, that is אדם ,
humankind in its plurality, both male and female (Gen.
1:29-30, The Voice).
As His crown of creation, Adam and Eve, is
where our story—that is the story of humanity’s constant
struggle with disobedience—begins. Created within shalom
(perfect peace), Adam and Eve shared in perfect relationship
and perfect unity with God. They loved Him, and He loved them.
But as the story goes, this perfect peace and fellowship was
broken through a simple act of disobedience against God
Himself. In a simple moment, the seething lies whispered
behind the guise of a harmless garden snake seeped deep into
the mind and heart of Eve, causing a certain tension between
reality and fantasy to rise from within. Does God really care?
Does He love me? And so this moment of doubt gives way to
disobedience and life would never be the same again. But could
it?
The truth of the matter is… life wouldn’t be
the same again. But, shalom could be restored. Peace could be
found. Reconciliation could occur. And the otherness that
resulted could become oneness again. There is hope. It came
born through the person of Jesus Christ, the Promised One,
who, though His head would be crushed, would in turn strike
his (the Enemy’s) heel (Gen. 3:15b). Christ would rise
victorious in restoring shalom and making things right again.
In his book, The Blue Parakeet, author Scot
McKnight writes:
God did push Adam and Eve out of the garden
of Eden lest they should “live forever” in their “otherness
condition.” That act of God was an act of mercy – an act that
ultimately anticipates the cross of Christ, Jesus’ act of
dying our death forgives us of our complicity in Adam and
Eve’s sin by assuming what we deserved: death. (Scot McKnight
2008, 76)
And
so through God’s providence and mercy, Adam and Eve are
banished from the garden and the story of God’s plan to
restore what was broken continued.
To
Be Continued
Disobedience is something we learn at an
early age. Children are taught the difference between right
and wrong, good and bad, and are guided in making such
decisions based on the reality of consequence. If a child
makes a right or good decision, only positive, good, or
neutral consequences will follow. If a child makes a wrong or
bad decision, only negative consequences will follow. Our
understanding of obedience, at the very origin of our
cognitive development, is largely consequential. The problem
with learning about disobedience at such a young age is that
most children are unable to reason that their actions should
not be driven by consequence but by rightness or wrongness
itself. Further, within these early years, children are almost
entirely unable to comprehend that choosing right from wrong,
good from bad, and better from best, should not just be driven
by morality, but by the tenants of loving, mutually submissive
relationship with those responsible for their rearing.
Basic psychology teaches, “Obedience is a
form of social influence where an individual acts in response
to a direct order from another individual, who is usually an
authority figure” (Saul McLeod 2007). The problem here,
however, is that this definition elevates authoritative
relationship, which, in turn perpetuates the problem of
consequentialism. It should come as no surprise that our
present philosophy is reflective of our earliest encounters of
“trying” to be good, “trying” to come under authority, and
“trying” to keep track of what will keep our limited and
lacking understanding of authoritative relationship intact. It
is within the very vein of our “trying” that we fail and find
ourselves further and further from success in seeking to
become obedient to what we sometimes consider a punitive God.
So, as we consider our very broken
understanding of obedience and authority as it pertains to
human relationship, it should also come as no surprise that
our relationship with God is similarly reflective of this same
wrong understanding. Yet, yielding our conditioned ideas of
obedience is requisite to embracing the reality that, we are,
in fact, bred—created—for obedience. How is this so? Is this
not by its very nature contradictory to everything said thus
far? We must take care to consider that Adam and Eve did not
directly disobey God for fear of consequences. Their
disobedience resulted from a moment of broken fellowship with
their Creator. They were designed for relationship; thereby,
they were created for fellowship through obedience to God.
Yet, through the insidious introduction of a
lie, fellowship was broken, and mistrust grew quickly and
deeply within the heart of woman and man, causing a rift to
split wide in their relationship with the Creator God. Adam
and Eve were created to live within the safety of obedience to
God because their relationship with Him was perfect, without
blemish, free of defect. His work in fixing the travesty that
took place in the Garden initiated our collective opportunity
from that moment on to be reconciled with the Creator of the
universe. This would be accomplished. And even through the
consequence of banishment, we see the loving hand of a
merciful God in His sending His beloved away, covered and
cared for, and certainly not alone.
The
Outflow of Restored Relationship
Yet, there was consequence. Adam and Eve
were sent away, told to leave the Garden, their home and place
of complete peace. And from then on, history would continue to
tell its countless stories of broken relationship within
humanity and with God, detailing His every effort to offer a
promise of protection, provide for His people’s needs, and
rescue them from complete and utter self-destruction. The
story within The Story is one of restored relationship, of
“fixing” what went wrong in the Garden, of calling each one of
us to come under the sovereign covering of a loving and
generous God, to share freely in life with one another. And so
the outflow of such restored relationship becomes obedience,
and the result of obedience becomes freedom through
submission.
Storyteller, American writer, and theologian
Carl Frederick Buechner writes in his collection of
theological “ABCs” and cleverly notes:
OBEDIENCE (See FREEDOM):
We have freedom to the degree that the
master whom we obey grants it to us in return for our
obedience […] The old prayer speaks of God ‘in whose service
is perfect freedom.’ The paradox is not as opaque as it
sounds. It means that to obey Love himself, who above all else
wishes us well, leaves us the freedom to be the best and
gladdest that we have it in us to become. The only freedom
Love denies us in the freedom to destroy ourselves ultimately.
(Frederick Buechner 1993, 34)
And so we see this great paradox play out
throughout scripture and within our faith journey – do you
want to save your life? Then lose it (Matt. 16:25, NIV). And
as Buechner notes – do you want freedom? Be obedient. But what
lies at the crux (quite literally) of both our ability and our
impulse to live in obedience to God is Love Himself, Jesus
Christ, crucified for all humanity to make right, once and for
all, all that went wrong in the Garden. And so here we find
that love… simply… suffices.
God’s intention was that we would live in a
state of love and harmony with him, with one another, and with
the rest of creation. He also made us free, wanting us to love
him voluntarily, not as puppets. That freedom was, and is,
misused, which accounts for the pain and paradox of our
condition. (Handbook of Doctrine 2013, 109)
So perhaps the childhood (and childlike)
constructs with which we have learned obedience as a behavior
and response must be demolished. We are granted a glorious
privilege for freedom in Christ through our loving commitment
to Him, the outflow of obedient hearts. Because the reality is
this: obedience is as much about real, covenanted relationship
as disobedience is about sin and separation. His call to us is
not to live in fear, but in awe of Him. His hope for us is to
live in agreement with His plans and purposes, not in discord
with them. His purpose for us it to live in loving obedience
to Him, not in worry of retribution and consequences. This was
what He had in mind from the very beginning.
Works Cited
Buechner,
Frederick. Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC Revised and
Expanded. New York, NY: HarperCollins,
1993.
McKnight,
Scot. The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible.
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2008.
McLeod,
Saul. "Obedience to Authority." Simply Psychology.
CreativeCommons, 2007. Accessed July 25, 2016.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/obedience.html.
The Holy
Bible. New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
2011.
The
Salvation Army Handbook of Doctrine. London: Salvation Books,
2013.
The Voice
Bible: Step into the Story of Scripture. Nashville, TN: Thomas
Nelson Inc., 2012.
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